


Fiero pasto

by Katerunaway



Category: Il buono il brutto il cattivo | The Good The Bad and The Ugly (1966)
Genre: Angst, Cannibalism, Hallucinations, Near Death Experiences, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28813971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katerunaway/pseuds/Katerunaway
Summary: “You always let me only take a bite”.
Relationships: "Blondie" | The Man with No Name/Tuco Ramirez
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Fiero pasto

“ When the rope pulls tight, you can feel the devil bite your ass!”

He used to say it as a joke, when he needed to cover his fear by spitting out angry words, but he wasn’t even sure the extent to which it could be considered only a pun.  
When the noose tightened around his neck he felt unbereable sensations - his heart beating increasingly faster, palpitations loud in his ears, the pangs of suffocation, vision blurrying and then, the dizziness. His grip on the outside world loosened for a couple minutes - but they felt longer than that. And sometimes he started to feel things. Things he usually could not see nor ear. He knew, that the tension and the fear of those moments could lead to hallucinate. But then there was something more, something that he felt was there to claim him.

He had never been a believer. Belief in the devil or the afterlife meant that you had to admit there was a God, a God to pray to and honor and obey. Those things were for people like his brother father Ramirez - people who had the certainty there was someone out there who listened to them. Tuco doubted that and even if he existed he wouldn’t trust him so easily.  
But he sensed, deep down himself, and he feared admitting it so he joked about it,  
that the devil was real and that it liked to meddle with humanity - seeming to have a preference for him.

It waited - hidden in some fold of your life where you couldnt see it, at a bad turn of the road - and claimed the souls of people who had a wrongful balance - either a tad of sin, or a long list of them. Just like him. 

That’s where they usually met, at bad turns, and this time it was the worst.  
Cemetery crosses all around him, and one under his feet, the familiar rope tugging at his neck and sacks full of gold at his feet. The gold was all he had ever dreamed of his whole life - abundance, never having to wish hopelessly for something again - and he was about to lose it.  
Was about to lose both in fact - his life and the gold.  
Once more he had been betrayed - once again history repeated itself - that, at least, was a certainty.

Once more it boiled down to the noose and himself, and each time there was a creeping thought, that he wouldn’t make it, that he would lose that crazy and desperate fight against his unknown fate. That fight was still better than being consumed slowly by fatigue, back broken working on some farm. At least, fucking hell, he felt alive, he felt he could play his cards with fate - even if they were poor cards, and the final outcome might have been negative, at least the feeling he could wrestle with it himself, and could give it all he had, made him feel good.

Even now, hands tied behind his back, the rope burning at his neck, he didn’t feel lik givint up yet.  
The sun was blazing down his aching shoulders, his breath was drawing increasingly short, the crows creaked and silence fell.

His vision blurred and then - familiar as that of an old friend - the voice started talking.

“Finally we see each other again. It’s been a long time. But soon we will have all the time in the world”.

The voice spoke softly and was barely audible, velvety but unbearably threatening, matching the sensation of a smooth body wrapping itself around him like a snake, warm and silk smooth against his skin. There was a violence as well as fondness to it, something he had never - or better rarely - experienced. 

“You won’t save yourself this time. This time you will be mine” a whisper at his ear “forever”.

“You know I am not good at... uh... stable relationships” he thought, or said, there was no difference at that point.  
The voice chuckled with amusement. “Let’s say that you are not good at relationships overall. They are not your thing”.  
“Yeah, that is the whole point. I am not good at relationships, I am a lost cause. You wanna be with someone forever, don’t look for me. There is plenty of fish in the sea. Goodbye”.  
“Oh, Tuco”. He felt begrudgingly pleased at hearing his name. “After all this time you haven’t understood that the only significant relationship in your life is the one with me”. The voice was speaking near his ear, he could feel its tongue caressing his lobe. “I am the only one who wants to be with you. The only one who ever has”. 

He thought faintly that it was true, but he didn’t want to care, his eyes fixed on the gold and his thoughts went to all the time and effort he had put in his search and he had never desired anything as madly and intensely as the money that was now at his feet. Almost anything.  
The gold had no smell nor it was warm. But at least he could touch it, at least he could put it in his pocket and know for sure it would not leave...  
The tongue at his ear was getting insistent and he felt increasingly weaker, half aroused and half sick. The coils tightened around him as the rope stretched and burned.

“Stop it. I am done with this bullshit. Whoever you are, you don’t own me”.  
The voice had hands - it even had hands! - and they caressed his neck. He shivered despite the warm fingers prodding at his chest, cold drops of sweat running down his forehead. “I like you. I like to see how you struggle and I like that you don’t know how it will play out in the end, it makes everything even more enjoyable. We have been dancing around each other for a while now. Let’s dance a little now too”.

His feet spun on the cross and he almost lost his balance. He felt lightheaded, blood pumping madly through his veins, heart beating faster and faster - 

“Oh God -“

“God has forgotten you but I haven’t”. The voice had lost its softness.  
“You have struggled all your life and this is what you got now. Nothing but me”.

He was tired of it all. For a moment the perspective of an end seemed awfully close to a relief - a blessing. That voice had a strange appeal, with its certainty and absolute truth and its promises and its fondness. If there was a hell, what was it in comparison to his life? What did the world offer to him anyway? The way he lived was good for an animal - he had a price and he could be sold, his worth being fixed on a poster for the bounty hunters and the lawmen. He had no connections, no safe island where he could be anything more than a number on a sheriff’s register.  
Yes, death would cut him off from all those preoccupations - but at the same time would seal that judgement.  
He realized he didn’t want to die like that - like an animal, knowing he had never been able to change that.

He looked at the gold again, he had dreamed to change his life with it and it was useless now.  
He had always been bad at relationships, never allowed himself to grow attached to anyone but this one time.  
He allowed himself to think about it finally: had his desperate attempt at affection failed in the end? When had he started to blindly trust the bastard and delude himself in thinking he had been worthy of trust too? Why was it so important to him to be worth more than money to Blondie? When had it started to matter?  
And what did he exactly hope for, now that he was gone?  
He looked to the horizon, searching for a horse, and saw Blondie take aim -

He shivered as one hand slid down his back. Claws dug in the soft spot at the small of it and made him flinch. The coils were wrapped so tight he could barely breathe now. The voice had a commanding tone, almost impatient. “I am hungry”. A hand grabbed and squeezed possessively at his hip. “All the desperation, the anger, the fear. You are full to the brim, a delicious meal. But you manage to run away every time. You always only let me take a bite”. A mouth closed slowly and firmly on the side of his hip, tender if not for the painful sting of the teeth in his flesh. Its lips - it even had lips! - pressed against his burning skin, and the voice hissed: “Don’t you understand, Tuco. You are mine”.

“We’ll see about that”.

—-  
Tuco shouted insults which echoed in the valley, his voice amplified by the round arena of the cemetery.  
Strangely, he could still sense that presence.  
“Are you still here? Why don’t you join the bastard over there since you both like playing me?” He asked.  
“Actually I played him.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“I told him I would let you live if he let me bite you. He didn’t know I had already set myself on another soul today.”  
“And why in the hell did the bastard let you do that?”  
“...”  
“Why did he have to make sure I lived?”  
The voice was silent. Gone.  
Tuco had to look for an answer by himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Fiero pasto means savage meal. It is a citation from Dante’ Inferno, XXXIII Canto, when one of the sinners is biting at another’s head.


End file.
